Usha Gupta and Pushpa Singh of
the University of Rajasthan decided that this was a question worth
exploring. They recruited 50 couples in the city of Jaipur, half of whom
had had arranged marriages. The other half had married based on love.

The couples had been together for varying lengths of time, ranging from 1
to 20 years. Was one set of couples enjoying greater marital bliss than
the other? Each person separately completed the Rubin Love Scale, which
measured how much he or she agreed with statements like “I feel that I
can confide in my husband/ wife about virtually everything” and “If I
could never be with my [loved one], I would feel miserable.”

The
researchers then compared the responses, not only on the dimension of
love versus arranged marriage, but also by the length of time that the
couples had been married. The couples who had married for love
and been together less than a year averaged a score of 70 points out of a
possible 91 on the love scale, but these numbers steadily fell over
time.

The love couples who had been married ten years or longer had an
average score of only 40 points. In contrast, the couples in arranged
marriages were less in love at the outset, averaging 58 points, but
their feelings increased over time to an average score of 68 at the ten
or more years mark.

Is it possible that
love marriages start out hot and grow cold, while arranged marriages
start cold and grow hot… or at least warm? This would make sense,
wouldn’t it? In an arranged marriage, two people are brought together
based on shared values and goals, with the assumption that they will
grow to like each other over time, much in the same way that a bond
develops between roommates or business partners or close friends.

On the
other hand, love marriage is based primarily on affection: People often
speak of the immediate chemistry that drew them together, the spark
that they took as a sign they were meant to be. But in the words of
George Bernard Shaw, marriage inspired by love brings two people
together “under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most
delusive, and most transient of passions.

They are required to swear
that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting
condition continuously until death do them part.” Indeed, both surveys
and direct measurements of brain activity show that by the time couples
have been together for 20 years, 90 percent have lost that all-consuming
passion they initially felt.